Over the
past 11 years, readers of my English-usage column in The Manila Times and,
from May 2009 onwards, members of this Forum as well would ask me for advice on
how to write more convincingly and readably in English. As might be expected,
it wasn’t possible for me to give them a simple, easy-to-apply formula for achieving
that goal. All I could really offer were bits and pieces of good-writing
techniques—most of them I learned on the job as writer and editor—on top of a continuing
stream of self-improvement lessons in English grammar and usage.
Looking
back now, however, I find that I have already come up with at least six essays that
perhaps could pass muster as an informal primer for improving one’s English writing.
All of these essays first appeared in my column in the Times, with two of them later forming part of my book English Plain and Simple (2003) and two others
of my book Give Your English the Winning
Edge (2009).They are, in their order of posting below, “One Man’s Meat,” on books to read to help develop one’s
communication skills in English; “The Fireside-Chat Technique,” on how to
combat the fear and mental paralysis that often set in when one sets out to
write; “Editing Oneself,” on how good writing is really the art of refining and
doing a finer assembly of one’s own raw thoughts; “Giving a Touch of Authority
to Our Prose,” on the crucial need to speak or write and act in keeping with
who we think, presume, or pretend we are; “Is there really an optimal way of
writing well for everyone?”, a reassurance that it’s perfectly normal to write
in fits and starts and to fuss over and revise one’s work even if it’s still in
progress; and “Writing to Hook the Reader,” on the writer’s primal obligation to
catch attention and to keep the reader reading from beginning to finish.
(August 24, 2013)
1 – One Man’s Meat
Dear Jay:
You asked me last
week to give you advice on what books to read to help you develop your
communication skills. I will tell you at the very outset that you will need to
read and talk a lot to become a good communicator. Of course, to become one
doesn’t mean that you have to be a certified bookworm or a fiery
interscholastic debater. You could, in fact, be worse off aiming to be either.
Many of the certified bookworms I know became so detached from reality that
they started to talk to themselves, to plants, and later to things you couldn’t
touch or see. And not a few of the spellbinding college debaters in my time had
metamorphosed into lawyers who would argue anything and everything to death, or
into politicians who are horribly long on rhetoric and promises but woefully
short on tangible results.
I take it that you
are probably a high school or college student or a professional having some
difficulty in your written or spoken English. I would therefore presume that
you still don’t have The Elements of
Style by William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White. It is a very slim, spare, but
eminently useful book on the basic rules of English usage. My old third edition
is always near me on my desk and I always consult it when I am suddenly seized
by doubt about my English. (And there is a great bonus in reading the two
co-authors, both consummate stylists of the English language: Strunk, a veteran
newspaper editor, taught English 8 as a Cornell University professor, and White
was one of his students. White went on to become one of the finest essayists in
the English language. Many years later he updated his mentor’s English
stylebook, which by then had already become a classic, and on the side wrote
fascinating animal stories like The
Talking Swan and—would you believe?—Stuart
Little the mouse.)
But if you want
your English prose to be more methodical, forceful, and stronger in logic, I
would suggest you buy yourself a copy and read The Lively Art of Writing by Lucile Vaughan Payne. I discovered
this highly instructive book only after college, and it is much to be regretted
that, at a time that I needed it most, I did not have its nuts-and-bolts wisdom
in doing the essay. I have yet to see another book on English writing that
matches Payne’s very forceful and lucid discussion of “the hooks of language,”
and how your increasing mastery of them can actually mark your progress as a
writer.
Now, if you are
already confident of your English but simply wish to develop a practical and
saleable prose style in your business or career, get yourself On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to
Writing Non-Fiction by William K. Zinsser. Many years ago this book knocked
some sense into my head when I was rushing headlong on a purely literary route
in my writing. Zinsser showed me that you need not be a Dylan Thomas or a
William Faulkner to be understood, get published, and get income from English
prose. The book, now on its 25th edition, will be a great companion
volume to The Elements of Style and The Lively Art of Writing. They are all
you’ll really ever need for basic equipment to confidently navigate the terrain
of the English language and travel in comfort with it.
These three basic
readings in English writing will, of course, not be enough to make you an
accomplished or great writer. They will only provide you with a wealth of
devices to focus your thoughts and to edit and rewrite yourself. You can be
sure that once you have read them and taken their prescriptions for good
English prose to heart, you will already have won half the battle. To win the
other half, of course, you will need further instruction on the writing craft.
But you don’t have to go far to get that instruction. To me, the best English
writing teachers have been—and still are—the masters of the writing craft. If
you are serious about your English, I suggest that you seek them out every now
and then, maybe just one at a time, for good measure.
Begin with Loren
Eiseley. I have not found a better than this consummate stylist in showing the
great lyric power that can be achieved with English prose. Try The Immense Journey, his maiden
collection of essays about animal and human evolution, and make it a point to
read his other works later. Then go back to E. B. White and read his very lucid
and compelling essays on city life and its frustrations, such as One Man’s Meat and The Essays of E. B. White. After that, get a little bite (but not
too much) of H. L. Mencken, that savage American iconoclast who, with
incomparable wit and style, had mastered the art of taking the blinkers off
people’s eyes. And then, to round off your readings on great English prose,
read The Lives of the Cell by Lewis
Thomas. This microbiologist and Pulitzer Prize-winning master of the essay can
explain the intricate workings of life clearly and magically by getting under
our skins with pleasure instead of pain.
This, Jay, is
essentially the road I have taken to arrive where I am in English prose. It is
admittedly just one man’s meat. It may be poison to some academics who may howl
and rant against the poverty and eclecticism of my reading suggestions. Well,
let them. I am too delighted to mind. You have asked me a question that I have
wanted to answer for many years, except that nobody asked until you did. For
this reason, I hope you will have as much pleasure in reading my answer as I am
having now in writing it.
Joe Carillo
2 - The Fireside-Chat Technique
One
major reason why even highly intelligent, well-educated people find it
difficult to write is that they have not learned to get into the proper frame
of mind for it. They stare at the blank paper or the blank computer screen with
dread, wracking their brains to find that voice that can make their writing
sparkle and become more persuasive, more convincing, perhaps more impressive.
But more often than not, even the first line of what they want to say eludes
them. This is because they cannot even form a clear mental picture of who they
are writing to. The same people who can effortlessly carry on lively, brilliant
conversations with their associates or deliver spellbinding speeches to huge
audiences suddenly develop imaginary stage fright when writing, browbeaten into
inaction by a faceless audience in their minds.
There is actually a very simple, straightforward technique to combat this mental paralysis. Just imagine an audience of one—only one. Forget about all the others who may have an interest in what you have to say; you will have time to bring them into the picture much, much later. Just focus on this audience of one—your boss, your staff, a critic, a lover, in fact anyone in particular—and imagine that he or she is right in front of you beside a nicely burning fireplace. For a reason that I will tell you later, make sure that it is a fireplace and not a living room sofa or dining table. Once this becomes clear in your mind, state your case gently, carefully answering every possible objection from your audience of one, clarifying when necessary but never arguing. When you are through, simply stop, then quietly ask your audience of one what he or she thinks. That’s all. No verbal pyrotechnics or literary flourishes. Just plain and simple talk.
You will be surprised by what the fireside-chat approach can do to your English writing, no matter what form it takes—memo, letter, essay, speech, or feature article. It will be virtually impossible for you to use legalese, gobbledygook, or wordy phrases. You will know it in your bones how ridiculous it is to use them. Just imagine how a sensible, intelligent person facing you will react to gobbledygook like this: “Sir, urban life in the context of the worsening population problem and traffic situation has taken its toll on me and my family. This realization has compelled me to make a major decision that I realize may affect the operations of the division whose management you have so kindly entrusted to me. Much to my regret, however, I am taking this occasion to inform you that my family and I have reached a decision to move...”
This is often the way memos on such sensitive subjects are written, but if you spoke this way during a fireside chat, your listener obviously will conclude that you have gone out of your mind. He may just decide to fire you ahead of your resignation, or shove you into the fireplace to put you back to your senses. Now you know why we need that fireplace there: it is not only for intimacy but for a quick reality check as well.
More likely, of course, when your thoughts are suitably tempered by the fireside ambiance, you will get rid of your legalese, gobbledygook, and wordy phrases and speak in plain and simple English, probably in this manner: “Sir, city life has become very difficult for me and my family. We can no longer bear the congestion and the traffic. I like my job and I am grateful to you for making me a division manager, but my family and I have decided to move...” Isn’t this the tenor of thought that you have been looking for all along? Imagining a fireside chat with an audience of one will not only make it possible but inevitable! This authentic human voice is really the only sensible way to talk about things that really matter to people. It is, believe me, also the most sensible and effective way to write to anyone other than yourself.
The fireside-chat technique actually uses the same formula that works so well in public speaking. You know the routine. Speak to only one person in the audience at any one time. Fix that person in the eye and imagine that you are speaking only to her and no one else, and once you have made your point, do the same to another person in the audience, and so on. Addressing all of the audience at the same time will require you to shift your eyes like crazy and focus on no one, making you look ridiculous.
So next time, when you find it difficult to write, simply use the fireside-chat technique. It may not make you a great writer, but it surely will make you a much better communicator than you are right now.
-------------------
From the book English Plain and Simple: No-Nonsense Ways to Learn Today’s Global Language by Jose A. Carillo © 2003 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.
There is actually a very simple, straightforward technique to combat this mental paralysis. Just imagine an audience of one—only one. Forget about all the others who may have an interest in what you have to say; you will have time to bring them into the picture much, much later. Just focus on this audience of one—your boss, your staff, a critic, a lover, in fact anyone in particular—and imagine that he or she is right in front of you beside a nicely burning fireplace. For a reason that I will tell you later, make sure that it is a fireplace and not a living room sofa or dining table. Once this becomes clear in your mind, state your case gently, carefully answering every possible objection from your audience of one, clarifying when necessary but never arguing. When you are through, simply stop, then quietly ask your audience of one what he or she thinks. That’s all. No verbal pyrotechnics or literary flourishes. Just plain and simple talk.
You will be surprised by what the fireside-chat approach can do to your English writing, no matter what form it takes—memo, letter, essay, speech, or feature article. It will be virtually impossible for you to use legalese, gobbledygook, or wordy phrases. You will know it in your bones how ridiculous it is to use them. Just imagine how a sensible, intelligent person facing you will react to gobbledygook like this: “Sir, urban life in the context of the worsening population problem and traffic situation has taken its toll on me and my family. This realization has compelled me to make a major decision that I realize may affect the operations of the division whose management you have so kindly entrusted to me. Much to my regret, however, I am taking this occasion to inform you that my family and I have reached a decision to move...”
This is often the way memos on such sensitive subjects are written, but if you spoke this way during a fireside chat, your listener obviously will conclude that you have gone out of your mind. He may just decide to fire you ahead of your resignation, or shove you into the fireplace to put you back to your senses. Now you know why we need that fireplace there: it is not only for intimacy but for a quick reality check as well.
More likely, of course, when your thoughts are suitably tempered by the fireside ambiance, you will get rid of your legalese, gobbledygook, and wordy phrases and speak in plain and simple English, probably in this manner: “Sir, city life has become very difficult for me and my family. We can no longer bear the congestion and the traffic. I like my job and I am grateful to you for making me a division manager, but my family and I have decided to move...” Isn’t this the tenor of thought that you have been looking for all along? Imagining a fireside chat with an audience of one will not only make it possible but inevitable! This authentic human voice is really the only sensible way to talk about things that really matter to people. It is, believe me, also the most sensible and effective way to write to anyone other than yourself.
The fireside-chat technique actually uses the same formula that works so well in public speaking. You know the routine. Speak to only one person in the audience at any one time. Fix that person in the eye and imagine that you are speaking only to her and no one else, and once you have made your point, do the same to another person in the audience, and so on. Addressing all of the audience at the same time will require you to shift your eyes like crazy and focus on no one, making you look ridiculous.
So next time, when you find it difficult to write, simply use the fireside-chat technique. It may not make you a great writer, but it surely will make you a much better communicator than you are right now.
-------------------
From the book English Plain and Simple: No-Nonsense Ways to Learn Today’s Global Language by Jose A. Carillo © 2003 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.
3 - Editing
Oneself
Like most people, it took me a long time to discover that what matters more in writing is not so much what we want to say but what the readers want to know. This, I think, is the biggest single reason why most of the writing we see around us is stiff, obtuse, and uncommunicative. Many writers forget or don’t even think about who their readers or listeners are. They do a secret monologue to themselves.
No wonder then that so many articles for academic journals just end up talking to the paper they are written on, and why many of the speeches we hear are so obtuse they might as well be delivered before an empty hall. Most of the writing that comes my way to be edited, in fact, shows very little evidence of honest-to-goodness effort to connect to the reader or listener. The research is often competent, but the prose almost always suffers from the dead weight of piled-up, undigested, and impersonally expressed information.
Take this lead sentence of a draft speech that I edited sometime ago: “Aldous Huxley wrote brilliantly about hallucinogens and their effect on creativity.” Of course, only someone who has read several books about Huxley, about hallucinogens, and about creativity can legitimately make such an audacious thesis—and the writer in this case obviously had not done so. What I did then was to recast the passage so the author could more modestly say it in the first-person singular and make the proper attributions: “A few days ago, I came across this brilliant but disturbing idea by Aldous Huxley, who wrote about hallucinogens and their effect on creativity. Let me share it with you and comment about it as I go along …” By doing so, I saved the writer from the embarrassment of making a tall claim totally outside his level of expertise.
This is actually a simple paradox: you become authoritative only when you write or speak as yourself. You can comfortably talk only about the things you really know, and only after you have declared the limits of your knowledge. Readers and audiences have a sixth sense for claimed authority that’s not really there, no matter if you have an MA or PhD tacked to your name. I therefore suggest you try this approach if you already have a draft of anything that’s bothering you for its dryness and stiffness, or for not being entirely original. See how this personal approach can perk up your prose and make it sound more interesting.
One final thought about self-editing: no draft is ever sacrosanct and final. There’s always a better way to say what you have written. With today’s word processors, it’s so much easier now to clarify prose that would otherwise mystify or confuse, or to support abstract concepts with telling details and picture words. You can easily transpose whole sentences and paragraphs, even turn your draft totally upside down until it captures precisely what you have in your mind. The mechanical constraints against total rewrites are gone.
And just when everything seems to be already in place, go over your draft once more. Knock off any word, phrase, sentence, or paragraph that doesn’t contribute to the idea or mood you want to convey. Stop only when you have whittled down your manuscript until it’s in danger of collapsing if you attempted to excise another word. In time, you will discover what many successful writers already know but rarely publicly admit: that good writing is really the art of rewriting, the art of doing brutal surgery on one’s own thoughts.
-------------------
From the book Give Your English the Winning Edge by Jose A. Carillo © 2009 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.
Like most people, it took me a long time to discover that what matters more in writing is not so much what we want to say but what the readers want to know. This, I think, is the biggest single reason why most of the writing we see around us is stiff, obtuse, and uncommunicative. Many writers forget or don’t even think about who their readers or listeners are. They do a secret monologue to themselves.
No wonder then that so many articles for academic journals just end up talking to the paper they are written on, and why many of the speeches we hear are so obtuse they might as well be delivered before an empty hall. Most of the writing that comes my way to be edited, in fact, shows very little evidence of honest-to-goodness effort to connect to the reader or listener. The research is often competent, but the prose almost always suffers from the dead weight of piled-up, undigested, and impersonally expressed information.
Take this lead sentence of a draft speech that I edited sometime ago: “Aldous Huxley wrote brilliantly about hallucinogens and their effect on creativity.” Of course, only someone who has read several books about Huxley, about hallucinogens, and about creativity can legitimately make such an audacious thesis—and the writer in this case obviously had not done so. What I did then was to recast the passage so the author could more modestly say it in the first-person singular and make the proper attributions: “A few days ago, I came across this brilliant but disturbing idea by Aldous Huxley, who wrote about hallucinogens and their effect on creativity. Let me share it with you and comment about it as I go along …” By doing so, I saved the writer from the embarrassment of making a tall claim totally outside his level of expertise.
This is actually a simple paradox: you become authoritative only when you write or speak as yourself. You can comfortably talk only about the things you really know, and only after you have declared the limits of your knowledge. Readers and audiences have a sixth sense for claimed authority that’s not really there, no matter if you have an MA or PhD tacked to your name. I therefore suggest you try this approach if you already have a draft of anything that’s bothering you for its dryness and stiffness, or for not being entirely original. See how this personal approach can perk up your prose and make it sound more interesting.
One final thought about self-editing: no draft is ever sacrosanct and final. There’s always a better way to say what you have written. With today’s word processors, it’s so much easier now to clarify prose that would otherwise mystify or confuse, or to support abstract concepts with telling details and picture words. You can easily transpose whole sentences and paragraphs, even turn your draft totally upside down until it captures precisely what you have in your mind. The mechanical constraints against total rewrites are gone.
And just when everything seems to be already in place, go over your draft once more. Knock off any word, phrase, sentence, or paragraph that doesn’t contribute to the idea or mood you want to convey. Stop only when you have whittled down your manuscript until it’s in danger of collapsing if you attempted to excise another word. In time, you will discover what many successful writers already know but rarely publicly admit: that good writing is really the art of rewriting, the art of doing brutal surgery on one’s own thoughts.
-------------------
From the book Give Your English the Winning Edge by Jose A. Carillo © 2009 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.
4 – Giving a Touch of Authority to Our Prose
“What a pair we make,” whispered the Prince of Wales to the
pilloried presumptive royal knight William in the riotously charming 2001 film A Knight’s Tale, “both trying hard to hide
who we are, both unable to do so.”
For those who have not seen the movie, the prince was
constrained to shed off his disguise as a monk among the lynching mob to save
the disgraced knight, who a few days earlier had spared him from the ignominy
of certain defeat by refusing to joust with him in a tournament. The knight,
through the machinations of a villainous duke, was thereafter unmasked as a
lowly thatcher’s son masquerading as a member of royalty, thus leading to his
arrest and humiliation on the pillory.
This medieval morality tale gives a powerful insight into
the crucial need to speak and act in keeping with who we think, presume, or
pretend we are. When we write, in particular, we must use language that conveys
our thoughts in ways that validate and support our own self-concept or
projection of ourselves. The wife of the Caesar must not only be chaste but
must look and sound chaste. The professor must really look and sound
professorial. The presidentiable must really look and sound presidentiable. To
fail to do this in both civilized and uncivilized society—or not to have the
wisdom or guile to at least sustain the charade—is to invite catastrophe, which
is precisely what brought the presumptive knight to the pillory for public
lynching.
Be that as it may, our most potent tool for becoming
credible is what the linguists call suasive diction. This is using language to
persuasively convey facts and the speaker’s feelings toward those facts. No
instrument is more potent for doing that, of course, than the writer’s or
speaker’s vocabulary. Our words define us. Whether armed with excellent
research or dubious information, whether motivated by good or bad intentions,
we can turn off the audience with awkward or leaden words, or hold it in thrall
with engaging words and well-turned phrases. It is largely through word choice,
in fact, that we establish our credibility and rapport with our audience. Short
of coercion or the force of arms, rarely can persuasive communication take
place without this credibility and rapport.
The most basic technique for suasive diction is the proper
use of the pronouns of power, namely “we,” “us,” “our,” “they,” and “them.”
These innocent-looking pronouns can confer a sense of authority—the illusion of
authority, if you may—to our written or spoken statements far beyond what the
first-person singular can give. The first-person “I” and “me” speak only for
the solitary communicator; on the other hand, the collective “we” and “us”
speak for an entire group or institution, which people normally take for
granted as less fallible and less prone to vainglory than the individual—hence
presumed to be more credible, more authoritative.
This, for instance, is why newspaper editorials routinely
use the institutional “we” although they are usually crafted by a solitary
writer not so high on the paper’s editorial totem pole; it’s also why tyrants
and despots of every stripe and persuasion always invoke “the right vested in
me by God/ law/ the sovereign people” to seize power or hold on to it, and why
candidates of paltry qualification and virtue invariably invoke “the people’s
great desire for change” or “divine signs in the sky” as their passport to
public office.
Of course, “we,” “us,” “our,” “they,” and “them” work just
as well as pronouns of solidarity. They foster a stronger sense of closeness
and intimacy with the audience, and can more easily put audiences at ease with
what the speaker has to say. In contrast, the first person “I” often comes
across as too one-sided and self-serving, particularly in writing, while the
second person “you” can sound too pedantic and intimidating. We stand a much
greater chance of getting a fair hearing from those antagonistic to our
position by making them think that we are actually on their side.
Even if we are good at using the pronouns of power and
solidarity, however, we must not for a minute believe that they are all we need
to achieve suasive diction. The facts supporting our contention must be
substantial and accurate. Our opinions must be truly informed, not half-baked,
and our logic must be sound and beyond reproach. Otherwise, we may have to put
on an act like that of the seemingly enlightened prince in A Knight’s Tale, lying to the lynching mob about the parentage of
William the thatcher’s son, then justifying that lie by nonchalantly invoking
royal infallibility: “He may appear to be of humble origins, but my personal
historians have discovered that he is descended from an ancient royal line.
This is my word, and as such is beyond contestation.”
A big lie indeed, but said with the confidence of a true
royal. (March 16, 2004)
-------------------
From the weekly column
“English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, March 16, 2004 issue © 2004 by The Manila
Times. All rights reserved.
5 – Is there really an optimal way of writing well for
everyone?
In time, each one of us develops
a uniquely personal way of putting our thoughts in writing, whether in simple
compositions like e-mails, memos, and letters or in creative work like short
stories, plays, or novels. But many of us sometimes can’t help asking
ourselves this question: Is the way we write correct and optimal? Or are there
better and more efficient ways of getting the writing task done?
Theoretically, there should be an optimal way of writing well, and scores of books have been published over the years making all sorts of prescriptions to achieve this. Knowing how idiosyncratic writers and the writing craft are, however, I really don’t think it’s advisable to prescribe a specific approach to writing for everyone. Obviously, what works best for the writer personally is the best approach for him or her, and I believe that a much better measure of the effectiveness of that approach is the quality of the written output along with how fast it is completed.
In an essay I wrote for my English-usage column in The Manila Times in October last year, “Should writers finish their compositions first before editing?”, I articulated my thoughts about the writing craft along this line. It was in response to an e-mail I received from a Forum member who wondered if she was on the right track with the way she writes. I am now posting that essay in the Forum as food for thought for everyone who writes, particularly those similarly beset with doubts about how they do it.
Should writers finish their compositions first before editing?
We write the way we write, and that unique way—for better or for worse—often becomes integral to what we might call our personal writing style. But are certain ways to write better than others?
Forum member Miss Mae was wondering if she was on the right track with the way she writes, so she sent me the following note by e-mail:
“One writing quirk I had was that I cannot write without writing down first. That is, literally penning my thoughts on paper before producing a final copy. It was laborious, all right, but what can I do? It was what worked for me in my high school and college years.
“I have had to adjust, though, when I began working. I was able to, but I developed another problem. Mindful of my grammar incompetence, I can’t help fussing over what I’ve just written. I learned somewhere that that should not be the case. Writers must finish their compositions before editing. Is that always true?”
My answer to Miss Mae probably would also apply to many others in a similar predicament:
Oh, Miss Mae, don’t you fret about your tendency to fuss over what you’ve just written! It’s a perfectly normal thing to fuss over your prose whether you are supremely confident or somewhat doubtful of your grammar competence. So long as you don’t obsessively and perpetually fuss over every little detail to the point of not making any progress at all—like the neurotic Mr. Monk, the hilariously perfectionist private detective in that TV series—you are OK. This is because when we write, we’re actually attempting to capture and share some of our thoughts for an audience, whether for just one reader or—in the case of writing for publication—a few thousands or millions of them. And we obviously want our writing to be not only grammatically and semantically flawless but clear, concise, readable, and convincing as well. Writing for an audience is nothing less than a public performance, so it’s but natural for us to put our best foot forward when doing so.
I must also tell you that except perhaps for short, pro-forma memos, letters, or instructions, it simply isn’t the norm for writers to be able to finish writing a composition first before editing it. From what I’ve seen over the years, in fact, most writers are like you and me—they correct or edit themselves along the way as they write. I don’t know of any writer who can complete a full-fledged essay, feature article, or opinion piece of sizable length in his or her mind before sitting down to write it, much less put it to paper or word processor without letup from beginning to finish. Anybody who tells you that he or she can routinely do this is either not telling the truth or is nothing less than a genius with photographic memory and total recall to boot.
Theoretically, there should be an optimal way of writing well, and scores of books have been published over the years making all sorts of prescriptions to achieve this. Knowing how idiosyncratic writers and the writing craft are, however, I really don’t think it’s advisable to prescribe a specific approach to writing for everyone. Obviously, what works best for the writer personally is the best approach for him or her, and I believe that a much better measure of the effectiveness of that approach is the quality of the written output along with how fast it is completed.
In an essay I wrote for my English-usage column in The Manila Times in October last year, “Should writers finish their compositions first before editing?”, I articulated my thoughts about the writing craft along this line. It was in response to an e-mail I received from a Forum member who wondered if she was on the right track with the way she writes. I am now posting that essay in the Forum as food for thought for everyone who writes, particularly those similarly beset with doubts about how they do it.
Should writers finish their compositions first before editing?
We write the way we write, and that unique way—for better or for worse—often becomes integral to what we might call our personal writing style. But are certain ways to write better than others?
Forum member Miss Mae was wondering if she was on the right track with the way she writes, so she sent me the following note by e-mail:
“One writing quirk I had was that I cannot write without writing down first. That is, literally penning my thoughts on paper before producing a final copy. It was laborious, all right, but what can I do? It was what worked for me in my high school and college years.
“I have had to adjust, though, when I began working. I was able to, but I developed another problem. Mindful of my grammar incompetence, I can’t help fussing over what I’ve just written. I learned somewhere that that should not be the case. Writers must finish their compositions before editing. Is that always true?”
My answer to Miss Mae probably would also apply to many others in a similar predicament:
Oh, Miss Mae, don’t you fret about your tendency to fuss over what you’ve just written! It’s a perfectly normal thing to fuss over your prose whether you are supremely confident or somewhat doubtful of your grammar competence. So long as you don’t obsessively and perpetually fuss over every little detail to the point of not making any progress at all—like the neurotic Mr. Monk, the hilariously perfectionist private detective in that TV series—you are OK. This is because when we write, we’re actually attempting to capture and share some of our thoughts for an audience, whether for just one reader or—in the case of writing for publication—a few thousands or millions of them. And we obviously want our writing to be not only grammatically and semantically flawless but clear, concise, readable, and convincing as well. Writing for an audience is nothing less than a public performance, so it’s but natural for us to put our best foot forward when doing so.
I must also tell you that except perhaps for short, pro-forma memos, letters, or instructions, it simply isn’t the norm for writers to be able to finish writing a composition first before editing it. From what I’ve seen over the years, in fact, most writers are like you and me—they correct or edit themselves along the way as they write. I don’t know of any writer who can complete a full-fledged essay, feature article, or opinion piece of sizable length in his or her mind before sitting down to write it, much less put it to paper or word processor without letup from beginning to finish. Anybody who tells you that he or she can routinely do this is either not telling the truth or is nothing less than a genius with photographic memory and total recall to boot.
I think
it’s the lot of most writers, whether amateur or professional, to write in fits
and starts. They first take down notes about their impressions and initial
ideas, juggle and juxtapose them into tentative statements in their heads or on
paper, then start organizing and logically linking them into sentences,
paragraphs, and entire compositions. Experienced writers are able to do this at
a faster clip, of course, but they generally do so in the same way that you
described your own writing process: literally pen thoughts on paper first and
fuss over them before producing a final draft. In short, Miss Mae, your writing
process isn’t quirkish at all but is actually the norm for most writers. And
with more experience and practice, you’ll find this writing process becoming
much easier, simpler, and faster—sometimes even a joy—to execute. (October 9,
2010)
-------------------
From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, October 9, 2010 © 2010 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.
From the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, October 9, 2010 © 2010 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.
6 - Writing to hook the reader
In an
essay that I wrote about the language of the Philippine national election
campaign in 2004, I briefly discussed the classic advertising acronym AIDA,
which I said was an opera of sorts in four acts: A for “Attention,” I for
“Interest,” D for “Desire,” and a different A for “Action.” It struck me at the
time that like advertising people and propagandists, all communicators in
general—and that, of course, includes fiction and nonfiction writers and
writers for the mass media as well—must do their own unique performance
of AIDA to get their message across and get people to think things their way.
And that, of course, wouldn’t happen at all if they didn’t perform the very
first of the four acts of the writing opera: the “Attention” cue, or getting
the reader interested to read them in the first place.
I am thus tempted to begin discussing AIDA’s first A by saying that writers should come up with a creative opening that will hold readers by their lapels and never let go, but that would really be begging the point. Creativity is an elusive thing. It worked for the American novelist Herman Melville when he began his classic Moby Dick with this disarming three-word opening, “Call me Ishmael.” It worked for the Austrian writer Franz Kafka with this intriguing opening of The Metamorphosis, “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.” And it worked for American legal-thriller writer Scott Turow in this compelling first paragraph of his novel Personal Injuries, “He knew it was wrong, and that he was going to get caught. He said he knew this day was coming.”
But what’s creative and interesting to us may either be too simple and too inconsequential to some, or too complex and too high-flown to others. There really is no single, fixed formula for it. The only mandatory thing is that whatever the chosen approach and style, the writer must be keenly aware of his or her primal obligation to keep the reader reading from beginning to finish.
I remember very well a consummate master of the “Attention” cue, but he was actually not a nonfiction or fiction writer; he was a noted Filipino industrial designer who used to ply the lecture circuit many years ago. His subject during a seminar-workshop I attended one hot summer afternoon was—if my memory serves me well—advertising communication, with focus on AIDA. We were just through with lunch after a hectic morning schedule, so most of us in the audience were naturally fagged and inattentive.
At that point, there came this bemoustached, bespectacled gentleman in his mid-forties carrying a tall stack of books, lecture notes, marking pens, boxes of marbles and paper clips—all those many little things you’d expect an intense university professor to haul into a classroom. He bellowed “Good afternoon!” to us, then promptly stumbled halfway to the lectern on the farther side of the room. As he made an effort to check his fall, all the things he was carrying flew helter-skelter over to us in the audience. That startled everyone, of course, so everybody’s impulse was to help the seemingly hapless and goofy lecturer gather his things. We were scampering all over the place picking them up, while he quietly took his time to regain his lost dignity and compose himself behind the lectern.
And when we had retrieved most of his things and had returned them to him, the sly fox spoke to us as if nothing untoward at all had happened: “Well, thank you, ladies and gentlemen! And now that I have your attention, I think you are now all ready for my lecture.” As might be expected, despite the ungodly timeslot, he and his talk turned out to be the most interesting and illuminating part of that seminar-workshop.
Of course I’m not saying that we should emulate that lecturer’s guts in pulling off such a messy attention-getting caper; I find it too high-handed and I simply can’t imagine myself doing it in any situation. Still, I think it drives home my point very well. Whether we are selling a presidential candidate, hawking a consumer product, writing a feature story or newspaper column, perhaps writing literary fiction, we simply can’t escape the need to get the reader’s attention. If we can’t get it, the whole writing effort is wasted. That’s where performing our little “Attention” act from AIDA comes in. Call it showmanship, call it skill, call it art, call it creativity, call it by any other name—but do it, and give it the best you can. (April 19, 2004)
-------------------
From the weekly column
“English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in The Manila Times, April 19, 2004 © 2004
by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.
I am thus tempted to begin discussing AIDA’s first A by saying that writers should come up with a creative opening that will hold readers by their lapels and never let go, but that would really be begging the point. Creativity is an elusive thing. It worked for the American novelist Herman Melville when he began his classic Moby Dick with this disarming three-word opening, “Call me Ishmael.” It worked for the Austrian writer Franz Kafka with this intriguing opening of The Metamorphosis, “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.” And it worked for American legal-thriller writer Scott Turow in this compelling first paragraph of his novel Personal Injuries, “He knew it was wrong, and that he was going to get caught. He said he knew this day was coming.”
But what’s creative and interesting to us may either be too simple and too inconsequential to some, or too complex and too high-flown to others. There really is no single, fixed formula for it. The only mandatory thing is that whatever the chosen approach and style, the writer must be keenly aware of his or her primal obligation to keep the reader reading from beginning to finish.
I remember very well a consummate master of the “Attention” cue, but he was actually not a nonfiction or fiction writer; he was a noted Filipino industrial designer who used to ply the lecture circuit many years ago. His subject during a seminar-workshop I attended one hot summer afternoon was—if my memory serves me well—advertising communication, with focus on AIDA. We were just through with lunch after a hectic morning schedule, so most of us in the audience were naturally fagged and inattentive.
At that point, there came this bemoustached, bespectacled gentleman in his mid-forties carrying a tall stack of books, lecture notes, marking pens, boxes of marbles and paper clips—all those many little things you’d expect an intense university professor to haul into a classroom. He bellowed “Good afternoon!” to us, then promptly stumbled halfway to the lectern on the farther side of the room. As he made an effort to check his fall, all the things he was carrying flew helter-skelter over to us in the audience. That startled everyone, of course, so everybody’s impulse was to help the seemingly hapless and goofy lecturer gather his things. We were scampering all over the place picking them up, while he quietly took his time to regain his lost dignity and compose himself behind the lectern.
And when we had retrieved most of his things and had returned them to him, the sly fox spoke to us as if nothing untoward at all had happened: “Well, thank you, ladies and gentlemen! And now that I have your attention, I think you are now all ready for my lecture.” As might be expected, despite the ungodly timeslot, he and his talk turned out to be the most interesting and illuminating part of that seminar-workshop.
Of course I’m not saying that we should emulate that lecturer’s guts in pulling off such a messy attention-getting caper; I find it too high-handed and I simply can’t imagine myself doing it in any situation. Still, I think it drives home my point very well. Whether we are selling a presidential candidate, hawking a consumer product, writing a feature story or newspaper column, perhaps writing literary fiction, we simply can’t escape the need to get the reader’s attention. If we can’t get it, the whole writing effort is wasted. That’s where performing our little “Attention” act from AIDA comes in. Call it showmanship, call it skill, call it art, call it creativity, call it by any other name—but do it, and give it the best you can. (April 19, 2004)
-------------------
